Hypocrite / The DCU

The DCU

Hypocrite in this franchise.

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Comic Books

Comic Books

• Batman:
  • In Heart of Hush, Hush mocks Batman's crime-fighting career as a sign of his inability to move on from his past. This is pretty rich considering that his own vendetta against Bruce stems from a grudge he's held since childhood for something that wasn't even Bruce's fault.
  • In the final issue of Batman: Incorporated, Talia al'Ghul sneers that Batman is a "pompous, posturing bastard". Though it's a fair criticism, no one from the House of al'Ghul — Talia included — has much room to be criticising others on any of those counts.
  • Hypocrisy and Moral Myopia are two of the more common traits of Batman's Rogues Gallery in general.
  • The man himself, when brainstorming ideas for a costume, said it had to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, for they "are a superstitious, cowardly lot". This is immediately followed by a bat crashing through Bruce's window, which he takes as an omen. Who's superstitious, again?
  • During the period of time when Damian Wayne was dead, Barbara Gordon tries to convince Bruce to stop taking things so harshly and even suggests she could wear the Robin costume. Bruce points out how rich that was coming from the person who, in that same time frame, had ripped off her own Bat-Insignia from her costume after believing that she killed her brother.
• Blackest Night: Captain Cold justifies killing the second Captain Boomerang by claiming "Rogues don't kill women and children." Trouble is the lineup at the time includes the second Mirror Master (who definitely killed Rachel Rathaway as well as the Rathaways' female housekeeper), the second Trickster (unless all the homeless people he blew up happened to be adult men), and Heat Wave (again, unless he somehow only caught adult men in his numerous acts of arson).
• The Flash: During the Justice League: Cry for Justice & Rise and Fall storylines, where Green Arrow I (Oliver Queen) murders Prometheus for destroying Star City and causing the death of his adopted granddaughter Lian Harper, Barry Allen was the one who had the most contempt for Oliver's actions. He made it clear to Hal Jordan that Oliver is not someone he should look for approval from because he's a muderer. This despite the fact that when Zoom tried to kill his fiancé at the time Fiona Webb, he killed Zoom to protect her. It's implied that Barry is using Oliver's murder as an excuse, to vent his hatred of Oliver and that he just hates him. Barry outright said that he always hated Oliver and could not understand why any of his friends like him; Hal even comments on how Barry never liked Oliver.
  • Flipped in regards to Ollie's reaction to Wally West's return as the Flash in The Flash (Infinite Frontier) as he's trying to force Wally to quit after the events of Heroes in Crisis, where Roy was killed, ignoring his own history of being a deliberate Vigilante Man and that Roy was in Sanctuary in the first place because Ollie himself has a history of being crappy to the kid. He gets a Heel Realization when Barry points this out and the story ends with the reveal that the explosion was really caused by Savitar, meaning Ollie was blaming an innocent man, albeit one who didn't realize he was innocent himself until learning this detail.
• Get Jiro!: While Rose and Jerry present themselves as vegans, it's revealed that Rose enjoys and prepares fancy dinners with duck dishes in secret. They are also known for their appeal in using "local ingredients", though Rose makes the meaning of the phrase "local" so that it means whatever she wants it to mean.
• Justice League of America: In the JLA: Tower of Babel, this is the reason why the Martian Manhunter refuses to expel Batman from the team as he had done the exact same thing in JLA: Year One and regretted it and he felt it would be hypocritical if he expelled Bats for something he himself had done.
• Vic Sage's Question towards Ted Kord's Blue Beetle in Pax Americana #1. Vic chastises Ted for relying too much on technology and cool gimmicks, even though Vic has no problem using technology against Ted and leaving behind calling cards with badass slogans on them.
• Salvation Run: Gorilla Grodd mocks Monsieur Mallah's claims that they are similar and derides him as the uplifted pet of a Mad Scientist. Grodd conveniently fails to mention that he was uplifted by an alien Mad Scientist.
• Supergirl: A Supergirl (1982) story lampshades the trope. Linda Danvers -aka Kara Zor-El, the titular heroine- quarrels with her then-boyfriend Philip Decker because he is prone to unexplained absences, causing Linda to suspect he is hiding something. Later she considers she is being a hypocrite: she is prone to unexplained absences, too. And Decker never complained about them.
• Superman:
  • Lex Luthor is easily the biggest hypocrite in all of DC Comics. Lex spends countless comics going on and on about how his Arch-Enemy Supes is evil and a threat to mankind with his powers and without him Earth would be so much better — yet every single time Lex gets Kryptonian powers himself like in All-Star Superman or New World Order arc he immediately becomes a Smug Super who happily exploits his god-like powers, becoming the very thing he makes Superman out to be. Lex’s spiel about only wanting the best for mankind rings hollow too, when he actively pursues his own world conquering goals and doesn’t really give a shit about his fellow man. Clark calls him on it in All-Star Superman, saying if Luthor truly wanted to help humanity he would’ve already done so.
    • Lex Luthor: Man of Steel: For most of the book, Luthor presents himself as an idealist and a humanist, championing the finest parts of humanity against a near-godlike alien who threatens to make them redundant, but he still has no qualms about killing people, or threatening their families to get his way. Furthermore, his entire plan exposes a hypocritical contradiction in his humanist rhetoric: for all his talk of the finer things that humanity could aspire to if only Superman wasn't around forcing them to be small and lack ambition, ultimately his plan hinges on destroying symbols of these finer things for reasons that reflect darker, pettier and more cynical motivations. He hopes that Superman saving Toyman will infuriate the people of Metropolis baying for his blood, thus appealing to their darker, angry and violent impulses, and he blows up the Science Spire and destroys Hope purely in the hopes that it'll make people view Superman negatively.
  • Justice League (2018) takes this even further with Lex, as for all his speeches about how Superman and the JL are blight upon the growth of human race, when he travels to the future and sees that his philosophy has won out — mankind has become Wretched Hive having given up on inspiring to be better, yet even then Lex refuses to accept he is wrong. Additionally in the same run, Lex’s general antagonism towards Supes for being an alien becomes pretty rich when he himself turns into a half-Martian hybrid.
  • Superman's own brief instance of hypocrisy is brought up in Batman And Superman Worlds Finest 1999 #7, where he admits that he urged Batman to not kill the Joker for the murder of Jason Todd despite having recently murdered three people himself (the Pocket Universe's Zod and his cohorts). Batman is pissed off, though Superman attempts to justify it by saying that that incident and what it led to (including causing him to have a mental breakdown and turn into an amnesiac Vigilante Man) was precisely why he wanted to spare Batman from doing the same.
  • In Superman: Red Son, Superman himself becomes this as he deems the conflict, corruption and abuse of power in other countries as needing to be fixed — all while blissfully ignorant of the fact he is becoming a Beware the Superman dictator seizing control of the entire world and hurting his allies and turning his country into even more of a police state than it already was. When Lex and Lois are able to show him that he is essentially treating the entire world like the bottled city of Kandor, Supes has a massive breakdown. Earlier on Supes criticises Mad Bomber Batman out for murder, yet at this point is giving his enemies mind control lobotomies in a Fate Worse than Death.
• V for Vendetta: Bishop Lilliman constantly preaches to his flock about morality, but regularly hires underage prostitutes.
• Watchmen:
  • Rorschach is a tragic example of this. When he was younger and writing a report about his life, he stated he supported President Truman’s decision to drop Fatman and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki since it was for the sake of ending the war. Yet cut to the end of the comic and Rorschach is disgusted and appalled at Ozymandias killing three million people for the sake of preventing nuclear war and refuses to go along with the plan. Depending who you ask this just shows the inherent flaws that make up his character or actually shows Rorschach‘s Character Development that now he believes no amount of peace is worth the thousand bodies used to create it.
  • Ozymandias himself is extremely hypocritical. As much as he considers the sacrifice of the people of New York as a Necessary Evil and kills his own henchmen when he no longer needs them, when it comes to his own life however Veidt (unlike Rorschach) is far more tentative. As soon as Dr. Manhattan shows up, he flees and desperately tries to kill him with the intrinsic field experiment test chamber. He also tells Nite Owl II to grow up after kicking down Laurie and states his world needs less obvious heroism, even though he’s the one who’s emotionally stunted and no less naive in how believes he can bring peace. His ultimately hypocrisy comes at the very end, as despite mocking Rorschach for “blotting out reality” he uneasily asks Manhattan if he did right thing and becomes anxious when the latter gives him a cryptic answer, Veidt was the really one blotting out reality hidden away in his arctic lair. It’s only after he’s committed his atrocities that he fears the world and the consequences catching up with him.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Helen Alexandros bemoans the fact the world only cares about beauty and physical looks, while later falling in love with Dr. Psycho for his looks as Wonder Man and completely overlooking him after turning back into his repulsive diminutive self. Showing despite her hatred of a superficial world, she is superficial herself.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Circe's misandry doesn't stop her from conducting affairs with Hercules, Ares, and Ballesteros. Despite her pride and distaste in men, she even tried to seduce Lex Luthor to gain perks while he was acting as President of the United States. Part of this is due to her boredom and desire for something interesting in her long life.
  • Wonder Woman (2006): Zeus acts like genocide is a horrific revolting aspect of Ares, whom he considers himself morally superior to in every way. While the entity known as Genocide is powered using Ares' essence Ares is the only Olympian not seen precipitating genocide against multiple civilizations and planets. Ares might love the bloodshed that comes with battle but the only group he wants to actually wipe out are the other gods, and he respects free will which Zeus despises.
  • Wonder Woman (2011): Apollo claims he wants Olympus to enter a new age of enlightenment free of the bloodshed and family feuding of the past. Yet he wastes no time in trying to kill family members he deems a threat and going so far as to torture and cannibalize parts of the First Born, who is his own brother.
  • The Barbara Minvera incarnation of the Cheetah attempted to kill Doctor Light for being a rapist — yet before that, she attempted to force herself on Wally West.

Films

Films

• Batman Film Series: Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin claims she wants to save plant life and undo the damage done to the environment, yet her schemes with Freeze would ultimately end up doing far more damage to Earth's ecosystem than it would save. She also burned her plant-filled laboratory to the ground.
• The Dark Knight: The Joker is more subtle than most examples. He claims to be an agent of chaos, tearing down the plans and schemes of society to prove that everyone is selfish and chaotic deep down. He aspires to make the "planners" see how pathetic their attempts to control life are. Yet all of his chaos-inducing schemes are heavily dependent on intricate planning to succeed. Further, when his own plan goes chaotically wrong in the climax (the boats he's holding hostage refuse to play his game and don't blow each other up to save themselves) he goes into a Villainous Breakdown, visibly freaking out and trying (poorly) to make himself seem scary again to Batman by blowing up both boats himself while giving yet another Breaking Speech; the very same lecture that in fact allows Batman to stop Dent from killing Gordon's son by tipping him off that he corrupted Dent. So if anyone was shown how pathetic they really are, it's the Joker.
  • Likewise, the 2019 film starring Joaquin Phoenix depicts the Joker as a Tragic Villain, an impoverished and down-on-his-luck street clown named Arthur whose journey of delusion and twisted self-discovery makes him Gotham's nemesis. In the film's finale he launches into a cynical Motive Rant directed at the people of Gotham for their mistreatment of him and their inability to know "what it's like to be the other guy". Of course, by this point Arthur has become largely unsympathetic to anyone other than himself, and comes to the conclusion that he can use his personal suffering to ignore or even justify all the terrible things he does, becoming a Serial Killer who isn't afraid of murdering people who have only slighted him (or possibly not at all).
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Luthor sees Superman as a threat to humanity yet, Luthor is the one who committed treason by blowing up a Senate hearing and he created Doomsday who is far more dangerous than any character seen. And then, there is his little action of using Kryptonian technology to signal malevolent aliens to come to earth, when he claimed he wanted to protect Earth from aliens.
  • SHAZAM! (2019):
    • Sivana points out to his father that the latter is motivated by greed. Sivana himself is quite greedy by wanting to gain superpowers through unearned means, even after he's already acquired superpowers.
    • Mr. Sivana refused to help Thad when the latter was getting harassed by Sid, telling him that he shouldn't be crying to other people. When Thad confronts him as an adult and butchers all his employees (Sid included), he cries for help.
      Sivana: (to his father) You can't go crying to other people all the time.
    • Billy's mother is revealed to have willingly abandoned Billy, justifying it as her own parents had abandoned her. The look on Billy's face shows how disappointed they are, that the former justified her actions as being abandoned as an irresponsible teenager was the same as abandoning a toddler.
  • Wonder Woman 1984:
    • The Amazons, namely Antiope in the opening scene where she reprimanded a young Diana, come off as extremely hypocritical. The "You can only have the Truth", "Truth is all there is", and the "No true Hero is born from Lies" lines ring quite hollow given they have been keeping the truth of Diana's birth (the fact she's not born from clay, but Zeus' daughter) secret from her for literally thousands of years.
    • The film retroactively makes Diana in Justice League (2017) look quite the hypocrite since she's completely against bringing Batman's plan to bring Superman back to life, yet in Wonder Woman 1984 she inadvertently "resurrects" Steve and is quite unwillingly to let him go despite knowing it's not right or natural. Really, Diana could have provided good wisdom and experience over the subject in Justice League rather then just antagonising Bruce over the idea. Granted this in hindsight, since Wonder Woman 1984 was written and released after Justice League came out.
    • Speaking of Steve's resurrection, by hijacking an innocent man and his continued relationship with Diana, it does, on a meta-level, make the standards the film and Wonder Woman repeatedly strive to teach very hypocritical due to a Double Standard. The film and Diana frequently comment on/portray the sexual harassment women receive from men. Usually, this would be a good thing, but the same movie also has Diana boink a stranger whose body Steve is possessing without said stranger's consent, essentially making it a kind of sexual assault/rape. Something just as bad as the harassment and near assault Diana and Barbra receives respectively, yet Diana is not called out on it.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Arrowverse
  • Arrow:
    • A recurring element of Oliver Queen's character. He criticizes Thea for her partying despite having done the same thing himself, and she at least has the excuse of acting out after the apparent death of her father and brother, while he was just young, rich, and stupid. His attempt to tell Helena what she's doing is wrong fails utterly because they're both murderous vigilantes, and he was actually going to kill the same man she killed for the same reason (In Season 2 after adopting Thou Shalt Not Kill he tries again with a little more success, as he actually has a leg to stand on that time). He's furious at Moira for not telling him about Thea's real father, but not only is he keeping much more dangerous secrets from his family, but he doesn't tell Thea either, even though she arguably has a much greater right to know than he does.
    • Laurel also suffers from this (repeatedly keeping secrets from her loved ones and then chewing others out for keeping secrets from her being the main issue) though at least she tends to be called out on it more than Ollie.
    • In season 4, Felicity gets angry at Oliver then breaks up with him because he hid his illegitimate son from her despite herself keeping secrets from him before including at the beginning of the season when she was still assisting Team Arrow.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • Eobard Thawne (in the guise of Professor Wells) gets upset when Barry changes the timeline (even though he only changes the events of one day and does it to save the city) and gives him a stern talking to about the dangers of time travel. This is coming from a man who traveled back over a hundred years in the past to kill The Flash as a child because of a petty grudge (and settled on killing his mother when the attempt failed) and killed various other people afterwards (including the original Wells) in his attempt to get back to the future. And that is not counting that after Flashpoint saves him, in Legends of Tomorrow he creates a group in which he damages the timeline. In that other series, Thawne tells Ray Palmer that he is not as evil as historical monsters, but later joins a group of Nazis.
    • Iris West scolds Barry and Joe for locking her out of the loop regarding Barry being The Flash. She has been hiding Wally West from Barry and Joe. Even she herself admits the hypocrisy later.
    • In "Run, Iris, Run", Ralph Dibny accused Iris of hiding while the other teammates fight, but that was exactly what he was doing in this episode. He even said that he didn't care about the other possible victims.
  • In the Legends of Tomorrow episode "Compromised", Sara sides with Martin, who is trying to convince that Jax that they can't change history to suit themselves. Shortly afterwards, Sara runs into Damian Darhk, who will murder Sara's sister almost thirty years in the future, and she immediately abandons their current mission to try and kill him, blowing the team's cover in the process. Jax quickly calls her on this.
• In Gotham, Barbara is upset at Gordon for not being entirely truthful about how he knows Cobblepot when she herself is keeping secrets from Gordon about taking drugs.
  • Later on, she calls Gordon and a woman answers (actually Ivy when she and Selina break into Gordon's house to get out of the storm). Barbara mistakenly believes Gordon is seeing someone else and declares "I'm done with him". This is after she left him, never saying when she will be back and already cheated on Gordon with Montoya.
• Smallville: The worst example has to be Lex Luthor (which is actually intentional, since this is one of Lex's defining attributes in the comics), who constantly bitches about Clark keeping his secret from him, while simultaneously keeping an army of skeletons (all of them far, far darker than Clark's) in his own closet.
  • Lana complains constantly about Clark and Lex hiding things from her, but the minute she has a secret (the black spaceship, the fact that Lex is still alive, etc.), she goes out of her way to hide it from Clark.
    • Which also makes her Too Dumb to Live, since in those situations Clark is probably the first person she should be talking to, as he actually has a proven track record of saving her from these situations.
  • In "Nocturne", Clark peevishly comments that Lana's Secret Admirer sounds like a stalker. This, from Mr. Peeping Telescope. The characters point this out in-universe.

Video Games

Video Games

• Commissioner Gordon in Batman: Arkham Origins called out Batman for supposedly killing Bane and refuses to work with him. Except that previously he shot two mooks trying to kill Warden Joseph for the same reason as Batman did (Saving an innocent life). Nobody even acknowledges it when Batman defends himself. Justified in the fact that while Gordon is a police officer who killed in the line of duty, Gordon sees Batman as a vigilante sanctioned by and accountable to no one.
• In Injustice: Gods Among Us:
  • Injustice!Superman calls out Sinestro for killing someone, despite he himself having already killed Green Arrow, Black Canary, several Green Lanterns and Hercules in the prequel comics. Sinestro calls him out on it.
    Sinestro: Says the alien who was trying to extricate Batman's head from his body. Spare me your petty distinctions.
  • When he finds out Batman has allied himself with Etrigan, he claims Batman has fallen as he's willing to "Ally with Hell", this while Superman happens to be wearing Sinestro's yellow ring of fear.
  • He complains that the citizens have become ungrateful to him after he killed Lex Luthor, not realizing that he was very ungrateful to Shazam who had just saved his life.
  • Injustice!Batman expects those in the Insurgency to follow his every word, yet he refuses to trust them in return and withholds information from them.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• DC Animated Universe
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • In "Pretty Poison", Poison Ivy screams "murderer" at Batman after her cuts himself free from her giant flytrap's Vine Tentacles, ignoring that she'd just tried to fatally kiss him like she did Harvey Dent earlier.
    • In "The Forgotten", Boss Biggis acts disgusted at how "lazy" his chain gang is in their work, completely ignoring the fact that he does no work at all.
  • Batman Beyond: In "Sneak Peek", Terry's mother initially disapproves of The Inside Peek and tells Terry that it might be "just entertainment" to him, but he'd think differently if he was the one being exposed on the show. When Peek discovers Batman's Secret Identity and plans to expose it, Mary is suddenly very eager to watch it; when Terry calls her out on it and reminds her of her earlier words, Mary casually responds, "Yeah, well, what do I know?"
  • Justice League:
    • Aresia the rogue Amazon, who's on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to wipe out all men after suffering atrocities as a child. "Man's world is filled with greed, deception, and cruelty!" says the woman who just greedily stole hoards of treasure, deceived the Amazons who rescued her as well as her own Mooks, and cruelly afflicted a deadly plague onto the world, as she looks over the destruction she's sowed. A shining example of what the world should be she ain't.
    • Cadmus. They do have a point that the Justice League is a potentially dangerous organization. But they often go out of their way to straight up attack them, instead of preparing for their possible betrayal. They're afraid of the Justice League crossing the line and creating huge problems, when they themselves have already done so.
    • The reason they say they're better? They obey the government and aren't a bunch of loose cannons. And when the BFG fires on Earth, (which was caused by Luthor hacking the Watchtower's computers), orders from the president himself told them to wait before taking action while he looked into the situation. What do they do? Wait a while, and then put a loose cannon in charge of an army to kill the entire Justice League, without waiting for government approval.
    • General Wade Eiling, who goes after the Justice League because he believes metahumans are dangerous and can't be trusted. He ends up becoming a metahuman himself, and goes after a group of heroes who have no powers (admittedly, he was looking for Superman, but he wasn't available). When a nearby civilian points out that he's the only one at the site of the battle with powers, he concedes the kid's point and leaves, and is not seen again.
    • Lex Luthor has cancer from manipulating kryptonite for years. He blames it all on Superman, saying that he would never had caught the disease if Superman didn't oppose him in the first place.
• Wonder Woman has an unintentional moment of this in Young Justice (2010) episode "Agendas". During a JL meeting she criticizes Batman for indoctrinating Dick Grayson aka Robin into crimefighting at an early age, insinuating Batman’s training might turn Dick into a violent Anti-Hero like him. While Diana makes a fair point and Batman clarifies he trained Dick not to turn out like him, anyone who’s familiar with Wonder Woman’s past and Amazon lore will recall she and other Amazons in Themiscrya are given Training from Hell from early ages and in the present happily teach very young women (e.g. Wonder Girl and Supergirl) to fight and in later Darker and Edgier continuities to kill. Meaning Diana had no business lecturing Bruce for raising kids into a violent lifestyle.

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